Empower 100 SHEpreneurs in Rural Zimbabwe...

Street Business School (SBS) is a leader in global training. Their mission is to end extreme poverty by empowering women and entrepreneurs, and they empower grass-root organisations to implement their proven and effective business training. Talia Women's Network was granted a unique opportunity to use the Street Business School (SBS) curriculum to complement our entrepreneurship and financial literacy training. 

The training curriculum focuses on ending the cycle of poverty and is not about giving hand-outs to communities. It uses proven methods to give the participants the knowledge and tools they need to succeed. In only six months, they take the knowledge and tools to create businesses of their own. As fearless businesswomen, they build their enterprises, meet their daily needs, and raise capable and confident children who will break the cycle of generational poverty.

With the funds raised from the project to date, a cohort of 35 women was recruited in the rural community of Mashambanhaka in Mashonaland Central Province in Zimbabwe. Following the orientation to the program, the women were trained using the first two modules of the SBS curriculum i.e. 'Getting out of your Comfort Zone' and 'Business Opportunity Identification'. As we go through the training, we refer to the women as 'coaches' because we strongly believe that as much as we are there to provide the business management skills, we can also learn so much from the women's experiences. So we refer to each other as coaches because we all learn from each other.

Meet Coach Tsitsi, one of the women in the current cohort of SHEpreneurs. She also happens to be the eldest in the class. Coach Tsitsi is a grandmother, who has the responsibility of looking after seven grandchildren and was struggling to make ends meet given the economic hardships the country is facing. When she heard the call for participants to the program, Coach Tsitsi immediately identified herself as a SHEpreneur and registered. She did not let her age or limited educational background discourage her from participating. Through the 'Getting out of your Comfort Zone' module, Coach Tsitsi realised that she was operating in a zone which was not even comfortable and that she can do so much more to break the cycle of poverty for herself and her grandchildren. In the second module, she received the necessary tools and skills to identify business opportunities around her. Coach Tsitsi took her little savings to establish a poultry project and she is happy to see the progress this is making. She has already started identifying potential markets for when the chickens will be ready for the market. Coach Tsitsi is grateful for the opportunity to be part of the program. She has gone through a mindset shift and now sees herself as a SHEpreneur and is anticipating comfortable profit margins from her poultry business. Coach Tsitsi is an eager learner and is looking forward to the next three months of learning and the transformation this will bring to her life.